IRAN, 17TH CENTURY

Details

A SAFAVID BLUE AND WHITE SOFT PASTE PORCELAIN CAT
IRAN, 17TH CENTURY
With two holes, one in the chest and one between the ears to facilitate its use as a kalian, the form that of a cat sitting on its haunches, with tail wrapped around its body, the white ground painted under the glaze in cobalt blue, with realistic fur-like delination on the chest and along the back of the head, the face with two round eyes and scrolling nose, surrounded by a series of small dots, the legs each individually outlined, and decorated with heavy flame motifs, each paws with three stylised toes, ears restored
5¾in. (14.6cm.) high

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Lot Essay

There apppear to be only two published comparable examples, one now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Arthur Lane, Later Islamic Pottery, London, 1971, pl. 76A; Yolande Crowe, Persia and China, London, 2002, no.247, p.155), the other in the Louvre (Arabesques et jardins de paradis, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1989, no.128, p.155). Whilst for many Safavid forms, such as elephants, phoenixes or toads, there are Chinese prototypes in drinking vessels, which were in Iran converted for use as kalians, Lane suggests that there are none for the cat/lion shape (op. cit., p. 99). Crowe refutes this, quoting a group of Chinese night lights in feline form of particularly fierce appearance.

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